No. A copyright is the appropriate form of protection for works of authorship. You need not register your work of authorship until you need to enforce your copyright, which is created automatically. You can register your work at the web site of the U.S. Copyright Office. A copyright cannot be used to protect titles, names, short phrases, slogans, ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, devices, standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, or lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources. Learn more about which form of intellectual property protection is best for your creation by reading my Inventor's Guide.

First, slogans, no matter how clever or how original, are not considered to embody sufficient original authorship for copyright protection. The U.S. Copyright Office will bounce your application.

Note that the U.S. Copyright Office does not judge the merit of someone's work. It can be a mediocre painting or a tedious article, or even a lousy poem, and it will be registered (provided of course that the required information is provided, on the correct lines).

In refusing to register slogans, the Copyright Office is not passing judgment on the merit of the slogan, but on the nature of the work as a mere slogan. The sufficient authorship requirement goes at least in part to policy as to what, and what not, can be held away from the public domain.

Second, a number of years ago it became trendy to place a trademark right up on the front of the product. My best guess is that the trend started with the little alligators. The little alligators were shown on the pockets of the shirts. Since the little alligators told everyone that you were wearing an upscale (expensive) brand, the alligators drove sales. The other manufacturers began adding their brand names to the front, and that drove sales too. Then even the off-brand brands came to the front, but that gets to a different story.

Well since putting the brand name on the front was now conventional, some folks successfully protected their slogans under trademark law, by selling t-shirts etc. with the slogan on the front and a prominent "TM" symbol.

This practice went on for quite a long time before the USPTO started clamping down on it. It still can be done, but not as easy as just slapping it on the front of a t-shirt or whatever. In fact, if a t-shirt front is your use specimen, registration will be undoubtedly be refused as merely ornamental use.

In addition, although trademark law does not require original authorship, common slogans and common symbols are excluded from trademark protection even if you establish appropriate trademark use.

The body of text beneath the tagline is taken verbatim from the front page of vectorlinux.com. I merely added a first line and a last line to follow up the theme of the proposed tagline. This worked well because I originally derived the attributes of speed, performance, and stability by studying this homepage Introduction. While the attributes describe VL well, they don't suggest any action. "Discover the difference" and "experience the difference" are in the imperative mood; they are commands with an implied subject "you". It isn't conspicous but the taglines strongly suggest that you try VL, to see for yourself that VL is an improvement over other distros.

I'm running PCLinuxOS 2007 now as I type, and it's kinda nice. I got two packages with synaptic, so now it plays movies, everything at youtube. So I guess I will compare to VL SOHO, see how we're doing. The PCLOS tagline/slogan is "radically simple." [period inclusive]

I was genuinely curious about the meaning of "When Choice Matters". It has gravitas that makes me think it means something special. If it's just a catch phrase that is required, I could accept "When Choice Matters". It's innocuous, it's not silly.

I don't think there is some deep meaning in it, but it does suggest a lot of what I like about VectorLinux. First, I don't have to use the same operating system as over 90% of computer users. I have a choice--and am taking advantage of it. Linux itself is all about choice. GUI or not--it's your choice. Desktop environment/window manager--take your pick. No matter whether your thing is eye candy or minimalism, you can have it in Linux. Because VL is so easily configurable, you're not limited to the distro's default. As for applications, Linux offers a wide choice. You can make your system what *YOU* want it to be, not what some corporation thinks it should be.

Because VectorLinux can accommodate a wide range of hardware, whether and when to upgrade your hardware are your choice, not something you *must* do in order to run a current operating system.

Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. VectorLinux is a lighterweight, fast, Linux operating system for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems and is based upon Slackware, one of the original Linux distributions. Slackware is the true 'Unix' of Linux distributions and its popularity stems from the fact that it is a robust, versatile and almost unbreakable system. VectorLinux has improved Slackware to produce a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain operating system that is second to none. We include automatic hardware configuration, unique administration tools and easy software package management via the Gslapt/slapt-get system. VectorLinux is considered to be the fastest, non-source Linux distribution on the planet!

Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. VectorLinux is a lighterweight, fast, Linux operating system for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems and is based upon Slackware, one of the original Linux distributions. Slackware is the true 'Unix' of Linux distributions and its popularity stems from the fact that it is a robust, versatile and almost unbreakable system. VectorLinux has improved Slackware to produce a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain operating system that is second to none. We include automatic hardware configuration, unique administration tools and easy software package management via the Gslapt/slapt-get system. VectorLinux is considered to be the fastest, non-source Linux distribution on the planet!

Speed, performance, stability -- these are attributes that set VectorLinux apart in the crowded field of Linux distributions. VectorLinux is a lighterweight, fast, Linux operating system for Intel-AMD x86 compatible systems and is based upon Slackware, one of the original Linux distributions. Slackware is the true 'Unix' of Linux distributions and its popularity stems from the fact that it is a robust, versatile and almost unbreakable system. VectorLinux has improved Slackware to produce a bloat free, easy to install, configure and maintain operating system that is second to none. We include automatic hardware configuration, unique administration tools and easy software package management via the Gslapt/slapt-get system. VectorLinux is considered to be the fastest, non-source Linux distribution on the planet!

Very nice nubcnubdo, I get a little time to play with the website we will give this a shot see how it looks.................. Thanks to all that have contributed to this thread. As the saying goes several heads are better than one.

I think lower case "discover the difference" is easier to read at a glance.

Because "discover the difference" is a complete sentence and not just a phrase, I think the dots are distracting and serve no purpose. An italic slant or even a cursive font will suffice to set it off.

Leaving out "yourself" in the final sentence leaves me hanging, seems like the thought was artificially truncated as a device to get the tagline out one last time. The final "Welcome home" precludes the preceding command being taken as flippant.

Looks very nice to me, good work. After saw it at the site, I only have a suggest, I didnt said it before because it brings up when I read it on the website context, under the "introduction" title. I think the next sentence after the title should be "VectorLinux is a ligth..." and we could set the "speed..." one after.About the other points, I think we should stay with the standard use and grammar much as we can.

Give VectorLinux a try and discover the difference... Welcome home.

Logged

"There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite."Jorge Luis Borges, Avatars of the Tortoise. --Jumalauta!!

I think lower case "discover the difference" is easier to read at a glance.

One way to make the tagline (in CAPS) a little more legible might be to increase the distance (space) between the three words, say, 50% for starters. Two spaces between the three words increased by 50%, that's half again.